Lecture Notes 2: Visual Literacy - The Language of Design

• Our job is to communicate with the world, to solve problems with images, type and/or animation. We are interested in words, languages, messages and meanings. We need to be able to effectively communicate ideas, concepts and content to different audiences in a range of contexts.
• Visual Communication:                                                                                                             1. Sending and receiving messages using type and images. 2. Based on level of shared understanding of signs, symbols, gestures and objects. 3. Is affected by audience, context, media and method of distribution.
• Visual Literacy 1:                                                                                                                           1. The ability to construct meaning from visual images and type. 2. Interpreting images of the present, past and a range of cultures. 3. Producing images that effectively communicate a message to an audience. Interpret, Negotiate and Make Meaning in the form of an image.
• Visual Literacy 2: Pictures can be read. Eg, A visual guide helps immensely when attempting to read the instructions on a foreign product.
• Visual Literacy 3: What is necessary for any language to exist is an agreement amongst a group of people that one thing will stand for another.                                  Eg, two lines can convey many things, a plus sign, first aid, hospital, positive, religion. By altering it slightly such as rotating it or extending one of its lines, even more be conveyed from it, such as a cross, a danger warning, multiplication, treasure map marking and incorrectness.
• When putting them in groups, the symbols are put into context, by connecting them together, one would believe it to be used for mathematics OR if religion symbols were put together with that plus, we would see it as a religious symbol.
• However, the real sign of christianity is not so well recognized as compared to the cross, the mass majority recognize the cross more so as the christian symbol than the fish.
• Color changes would make the plus represent hospital and first aid, color is another form of communication.
• By altering the backgrounds, colors and the two lines ever so slightly, it can present numerous meanings.
• Visual Literacy 4: Visual Communication is made up of presentational symbols whose meaning results from their existence in particular contexts... the conventions of visual communication are a combination of universal and cultural symbols. Eg, colors used as established norms to differentiate gender signs more so than the symbols themselves.
• Why are Visual Semantics important? Two similar symbols are used for very different contexts, powerful symbols can really affect our beliefs.
• Visual Literacy 5: Being visually literate requires an awareness of the relationship betwen visual syntax and visual semantics.
• Visual Literacy 6: Syntax: of an image refers to the pictorial structure and visual organization of elements. It represents the basic building blocks of an image that affects the way we read.
• Eg, an egg can symbolize food, life, chickens, philosophy. An egg in a cup represents breakfast.
• Visual Literacy 7: Semantics: of an image refers the way an image fits into a cultural process of communication. It includes the relationship between the form and meaning and the way meaning is created through. How, where, when they were created counts
• Eg, Triangles represent a form of warning, circles commands. Octagon and upside down triangles are however used for only one sign each, used for particularly important messages, especially during emergencies when the image in the centre cannot be seen.
• Visual Literacy 8: Semiotics: is the study of signs and sign processes, closely related to the field of linguistics, which studies the structure and meaning of language (Symbol, Sign, Signifier, Metaphor, Metonym, Synecdoche)
• Symbol (Logo): Symbolizes an apple. Sign (Idenity): Is a sign for Apple products, Signifier (Brand): It signified quality, innovation, creativity, design and lifestyle
• Visual Synecdoche: Term is applied when a part is used to represent the whole, or vice versa. The main subject is simply substituted for something that is inherently connected to it. This substitution only works if what the synecdoche represents is universally recognized. (Statue of liberty)
• Visual Metonym: Is a symbolic image that is used to make reference to something with a more literal meaning. By way of association the viewer makes a connection between the image and the intended subject Unlike a visual synecdoche, the two images bear a close relation, but are not intrinsically linked. (Cab color)
• Visual Metaphor: is used to transfer the meaning from one image to another. Although the images may have no close relationship, a metaphor conveys an impression about something relatively unfamiliar
• Visual Literacy 9: "Work the metaphor" every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.
• Visual Literacy 10: Everything stands for something else nowadays, one thing never seems to have a lone meaning to it anymore. (Eg, apple)